Lexington native writes second novel

Thursday

Mar 12, 2009 at 12:01 AMMar 12, 2009 at 9:08 AM

By VIKKI BROUGHTON HODGES The Dispatch

When Jack Riggs was studying literature in the early '70s at Lexington Senior High School, he never thought he might become a novelist one day.He fondly recalls classes led by teachers Harold Cranford, Doris Helvey and Mildred Raper at LSHS, where he graduated in 1973."In all honesty, those three gave me a love for literature, but I don't think I was old enough to know I wanted to be a writer," Riggs said in a phone interview earlier this week. "I had to grow up to get to the point where I could do it."Like many creative teenagers of the time, Riggs said, he was drawn to music, and he and longtime friend Lee Spears wrote songs and performed during their college years. But Riggs was also drawn to another aspect of pop culture - films and television, which he majored in at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He also earned a master's degree in film from the University of Michigan before heading for California."I liked the activeness of it," he said. "I thought I would like living in Hollywood and working on movies. But it wasn't as fulfilling a creative outlet as I thought it would be."Riggs was a story analyst for HBO, reading and approving scripts, for many years and even spent close to two years writing his own screenplay, only to have a director want to change it substantially. He then began working more in production, including helping produce a couple of music videos for Guns 'N Roses.About the same time, Riggs enrolled in some evening writing workshops at the University of California at Los Angeles. He also began to read a lot of Southern writers, including Larry Brown, Clyde Edgerton and Pat Conroy, whose "Prince of Tides" inspired him to seriously consider writing fiction himself."After I read that book, I knew that's what I wanted to do," he said. "If I could, I wanted to figure out how I could do that full time, write and teach."Riggs submitted some writing that enabled him to be accepted into the creative writing program at UNCG, where he received a Master in Fine Arts degree in 1993 after studying with writer Fred Chappell. He then began teaching at Georgia Perimeter College, a two-year college in Atlanta. He has been the writer-in-residence at the college's Writers Institute for nearly five years, which has allowed him more time to write and help develop fellow writers.His debut novel, "When the Finch Rises," was published by Ballantine Books/Random House five years ago, and his second book, "The Fireman's Wife," was published in January. Riggs is on tour to promote the new book and will be in Lexington Saturday to sign books from noon to 2 p.m. at Pandora's Books, 23 W. Second Ave.Riggs' first book, a coming-of-age story in the late '60s about two boys in a small Southern mill town - not unlike Lexington - was a Booksense Pick, one of Booklist's Top 10 Novels of the Year and a regional bestseller. He was named Georgia Author of the Year-First Novel in 2003.His newest novel, set in 1970 in the Low Country of South Carolina and the North Carolina mountains, is about the unraveling of a 15-year marriage between Peck, a small-town fire chief caught up in his own work, and his unfulfilled wife, Cassie, who leaves Peck for another man and begins her own search of self-discovery. The book shifts back and forth between the main characters' points of view."There's an underlying suggestion of women's rights," he said, noting that is why he chose the year of 1970 for the time frame. "But I didn't want it to be a political story, so there's very little said about that. But it's clear she's restless and unfulfilled."Riggs said the book has a sense of reconciliation between the characters but also shows how people have to learn to live with the consequences of their actions. It's not a "happily ever after" scenario."It's a story of life's lessons, where they came from and how they're given to us - and they're not always given to us in good ways," he said. "Sometimes lessons are learned the hard way. Basically, my fiction is about living through difficult times to find the light on the other side."While he is in town this week, in addition to visiting his parents, Tom and Betsy Riggs, the author said he will be doing a little research on the Erlanger mill village. He said he is reading a book about mill villages around the South in the '30s, as well as the mill baseball teams, and he is thinking about setting a new novel in that era and place."I'm interested in that whole way of life," he said. "It was an amazing time in the development of this country."But I haven't even heard a voice yet. A character has to start to speak to me before I can write."Vikki Broughton Hodges can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 214, or at vikki.hodges@the-dispatch.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.